Provider Quality Assurance Officer (Children's Brokerage & Specialist Placements) - x Posts
PO: £, rising in annual increments to £, pa LW
Hybrid Working (includes extensive nationwide travel)
Permanent / Full Time / Hours
About Lambeth Children Services:
Lambeth is a borough of huge diversity, strength, and possibility. Lambeth is home to approximately, children aged -, representing nearly % of our borough’s population. Our Lambeth partnerships have the highest ambitions for our children and want them to grow up to be happy, safe and thriving in supportive communities. We have a rich network of good and outstanding schools, a passionate voluntary community sector and an exciting youth and play offer. Children growing up in Lambeth are surrounded by beautiful green spaces and a borough with a rich history, arts, and music scene.
Despite this, our children also face challenges and adversity. There are several health and wellbeing indicators that are higher in Lambeth than other boroughs, including children in need due to parent disability, first time entrants to youth justice system, and children and young people with special educational needs and disabilities. We have significant demand for mental health and emotional wellbeing provision and have critical challenges regarding placement sufficiency for our Children Looked After. Lambeth is the fifth most densely populated borough in the UK with sharp contrasts between wealth and poverty. It is estimated that % of our children and young people are living in poverty, rising to % when housing costs are factored in; we know Covid- pandemic has exacerbated challenges for many families in Lambeth and created a new set of problems for others.
It’s an incredibly exciting time to come and work in Lambeth. There’s plenty to get your teeth into – be it leading the implementation of our strategy for youth services, overseeing the transformation of our emotional health and wellbeing provision, or presiding over the development of a new team delivering efficient brokerage for our teams.
We’re passionate about integration of services and teams across education, health and social care to ensure our population can access services that are joined-up and seamless. All of these roles play very important roles in partnership development with internal and external stakeholders.
A message from The Assistant Director
Successful applicants should have a drive to get things done and be able to promote and facilitate innovation, creativity, and continuous improvement of children placement services.
Successful applicant should have demonstrable experience of quality assurance within children’s residential services including file and paperwork audits, excellent communication skills and in particular the ability to engage with young people and their networks.
Successful applicant must have proven report writing skills, the ability to provide recommendations on how to improve our services for the benefit of the young people in our care, understanding of safeguarding and GDPR in practice and the ability to travel and undertake quality assurance visits nationwide at short notices.
About You:
The role will involve quality assuring the safeguarding standards and practices of children and young people in care as well as care leavers placements as well as monitoring unregistered and unregulated provisions. You would be required to produce reports about each visit providing an opinion (with supporting evidence) as to whether children are effectively safeguarded, and the home is being conducted in a way that promotes children's wellbeing.
You will also be providing recommendations for the improvement and enhancement of services in the interests of the children and young people we care for ensuring that the voices of children and young people are heard and reflected in reporting. You will communicate with, and offer support and guidance to external placement providers, directors and managers regarding compliance, continual improvement, and best safeguarding and care standard practices.
You must have significant experience of working in the children’s care sector either as a manager of a children’s home, social worker, regulator or as an independent (Children’s Homes Regulation ) visitor for another organisation. You must have an excellent understanding of the Children’s Home (England) Regulation, quality standards, guidance and social care common inspection framework. The ideal person must have significant experience of +/leaving care services and its legislation and guidance.
Why Lambeth:-
1. Fantastic, modern working environment in the award-winning Lambeth Town Hall and Civic Centre buildings
2. Competitive Salaries
3. Up to days annual leave, dependent upon continuous service
4. Minutes from London Underground and excellent transport links into the centre of London
5. Hybrid/Flexible working
6. Cycle to Work Scheme (including City Bike Hire scheme)
7. Attractive Local Government Pension Scheme
We are a Stonewall diversity champion; a Living Wage Employer and we guarantee to interview all disabled candidates who meet the minimum criteria of the role.